Category: Green Entrepreneurship, Climate Resilience, Sustainable Agriculture

Happy Hill Neighborhood Association works to ensure that families in the historically African American community havecommunity, have a balance of intellectual vitality, economic strength, healthcare resources, climate resilience, and effective social and traditional infrastructure. Happy Hill manages the oldest community garden in North Carolina and is connected to 4-H and the Winston-Salem Forsyth County Extension Services.

Renew Forsyth is one of the Institute for Regenerative Design & Innovation first Cooperative-Innovation Platforms. This community-based platform uses a unique Living Laboratory that will serve as a community gathering space and a hub for a future city-wide Health Innovation District. Residents will enjoy an immersive space to virtually explore Winston Salem’s emerging food innovation ecosystem. The living lab will connect Winston’s rich culinary arts network with its growing regenerative agriculture network. This Resilient-Community approach to community development was co-designed with numerous organizational and community stakeholders across Forsyth County including SHARE Cooperative, The Green House, and Triad Farmers Network. National and international partners include the Living Architecture Systems Group, Bionutrient Food Association, Dream Corps and more. Renew Forsyth’s Incarceration – to – Resiliency pipeline utilizes “agropreneurship” development with Project Reentry, Resources for Resilience, and Happy Hill Neighborhood Association to grow and restore the local economy from the soil-up.

Winston-Salem’s urban farm co-op, consisting of The Triad Farmers Network and Granville District Farms, was co-launched in spring 2021 by several agricultural entrepreneurs. This network serves as the agropreneur and farmer hub for Renew Forsyth’s emerging Food Innovation District. It has developed a unique urban-coop model that includes a mobile farmers’ market. The farmers market improved the local food supply chain by providing  fresh local food to six food deserts throughout Winston-Salem and growing bionutrient food for both Wake Forest University’s new Fresh Food Rx program and the new Restaurant Supported Agriculture (RSA) program. In collaboration with the Bionutrient Food Association, this RSA program is poised to shift local and regional demand towards regeneratively grown food.

Established in 1976, the Career Center is an amazing community of educators and students right in the heart of Winston-Salem. The Center provides a college preparatory extension to regular high school programs and is available to all students in Winston-Salem Forsyth County Schools (WSFCS). Students across the school district have options to complete their choice of college readiness, technical training, career building, or academic acceleration courses offered at the Career Center. This environment offers a perfect pathway to pursue university, community college, or immediate employment after graduation. The academic environment provides a rigorous curriculum that supports personalized mentorship and individualized development between educators and students. At Career Center, students are offered unique learning opportunities and may choose Advanced Placement, Career Technical, regular curriculum, or specialty courses.

Project Re-Entry
The Criminal Justice Department of Piedmont Triad Regional Council’s mission is to improve the reintegration of justice involved individuals, reduce criminal justice costs, and increase public safety through the establishment of a pre-to-post release transitional planning system. Since 2003, the Council has operated Project Re-entry, a comprehensive program featuring pre-release and post release services facilitated in ten North Carolina prisons and thirteen counties. The Pre-release curriculum model works with currently incarcerated individuals on home plans, focusing on a successful transition back to their communities. The Post release services offer individual case management, transition planning, deinstitutionalization counseling, employment and vocational training, mental health and substance abuse treatment referrals, housing referrals, basic needs, transportation assistance, and family reunification support. Project Family is a division of Project Re-entry providing support and services for the families of incarcerated individuals,focusing on justice impacted children. Project Family assists incarcerated parents in becoming better equipped to care for their children through specialized case management, coaching, peer-directed personal development instruction, and vocational skills that build self sufficiency.

Umoja Health, Wellness and Justice Collective is a peer-led 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to create community through storytelling, connection and culture. We provide certified peer support specialist training programs, children after school and summer programs, trauma-responsive services, and mental health support groups. Umoji addresses the equitable public health crisis permeating disenfranchised communities by offering support groups for family trauma, domestic abuse, woman and man empowerment, substance abuse, and fatherhood reintegration. Umoja works to create a community resilient to adverse social, institutional, and economic trauma and adversity with equitable access to resources that support healthy and productive lives.

The Green House, is a health conscious and wellness retail store located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. This farm-to-table convenient store offers the Winston-Salem community and surrounding areas with plant-based wellness products, hand crafted by local entrepreneurs. The Green House prioritizes creating a bionutrient food supply chain that funnels to local business owners and the larger soil-to-food supply chain across Forsyth County.

Bionutrient Food Association (BFA) is on a mission to increase quality in America’s food supply. In collaboration with Renew Foryth, BFA is launching The Story of the Plate,one of the most comprehensive urban regenerative agriculture models in the world. The collaboration centrs bionutrient food within a a method of urban development that seeks to build a restorative relationship with nature.  The Story of the Plate links the conditions in the environments where people are born, live, learn, work, play, and other outcomes that impact quality of life to create an inclusive nutrient rich consumer market. By focusing on the social determinants of health and trauma resiliency The Story of the Plate creates a unique Soul-to-Soil-to-Food supply-chain that  prioritizes equitable access. This model links the through a unique called the Story of the Plate. BFA conducts research through the Bionutrient Institute to shed light on the current state of the food supply so asthat to empower consumers with discernment in identifying the quality of their food and incentivize food suppliers to source the best quality available. 

BFA hypothesizes that through agricultural advancement and consumer education, buyers, wholesalers, and retailers will prioritize the quality of their food source and supply chain. As this model develops with implementation, partnerships with allies like Renew Forsyth are critical to its collective overall success. 

Transparency, open collaboration, and integrity guide BFA’s vision as the organization takes strides towards a healthier future for our communities, farmers, eaters, and children.

H.O.P.E. of Winston-Salem works to improve the health of Winston-Salem’s  children by providing equitable access solutions that tackle the child hunger problem. We facilitate programs that fortify child food security and provide access to nutritious food items. H.O.P.E.’s mission prioritizes the mental and physical well-being of the community, empowering families to lead healthier lives.

The SHARE Cooperative of Winston-Salem (SHARE) is a faith based food and program supplier serving the diverse citizens of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Our mission centers on providing wholesome and nutritional food to families in and around designated food deserts in our neighborhoods. SHARE is a collaboration of the various socio-economic and ethnic groups that leverage the buying power of their community members and sell healthy food at Harvest Market, the full-service retail store.procures food wholesale to leverage the buying power of its members/owners and sells healthy food at its full-service retail store Harvest Market. The Share Cooperative provides nutrition education to transform the community’s food buying habits, offers counseling and immigrant support, and engages in local food policy planning.